


Again and Again and Again

by Venna Frost (LadyAzaraRose)



Series: Things Happen Bingo [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Blaize's bad decisions come back to haunt him, Blood, Burned Bodies, Falling From a Great Height, Fire, Gen, Mentions of Paralysis, Time Loop, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25179709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAzaraRose/pseuds/Venna%20Frost
Summary: Sometimes, bad decisions- the kind that ruin someone's life- come back to haunt you. And sometimes, they drag you into the past and make you watch your choice's consequences over and over and over again.Or:Blaize never really stood a chance, not with all the mistakes he made, and now he gets to watch them.
Series: Things Happen Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1812826
Kudos: 1





	Again and Again and Again

**Author's Note:**

> Number two of my Bad Things Happen Bingo and the first multi-chapter one that probably won't be finished by the end of the month, if only because I'm a horrible little gremlin creature. It is, as usual, an excerpt from one of my WIPs, so we'll see where it ends up!

When consciousness- or at least, it’s close, belligerent cousin- whacked Blaize over the head in a violent reintroduction into the waking world, he wished he could return to the blissful darkness that had been the result of… Something, he wasn’t sure what. Whatever it was, though, it left him with surprisingly little in the way of a headache, which he was _not_ going to complain about.

Voices filtered in around him and he sighed, “I’m fine, I’m fine, not even a headache, what happened?”

The voices continued on, never breaking the flow of the conversation. Blaize opened his eyes and finally looked around, frowning deeply as he discovered himself in their old command room which had most assuredly been regulated to… He wasn’t sure. Something that Tatsumaki and Cala took care of.

What was even more unusual was the fact that his whole team was there, standing around a table that had long since been moved to the new command center.

“Guys?”

Again, the voices ignored him and Blaize finally pulled his attention up to the people in the room: Cala by the table, Daine lurking in the corner and- Tatsumaki, standing…

Blaize’s brain stuttered to a halt because Tatsumaki was _standing._

This had to be some sort of hallucination, it _had_ to be. It’d been months since the- since Tatsumaki- since they’d learned that the swordsman would never walk again, not without magic. Months since he’d been taken from them and left in Allen’s less-than-tender care, months since Blaize had begged Fallon to Turn Tatsumaki into a monster.

It had been _months._ At least a year, he thought, though he didn’t pay much heed to dates anymore. Not since Tatsumaki had taken over as secretary, negating the need for Blaize to even know what day of the week it was.

“Blaize, I don’t know if this is a good idea…” Cala was frowning at the map spread over the table.

That felt far too familiar, but before Blaize could answer, he heard his own voice dismiss her concerns, “Tatsumaki and whoever from Captain d’Myles’s team can handle it.”

“But they’ll be right-”

“They can handle it. Can’t you?”

Blaize didn’t have to turn around to know that the question was aimed at Tatsumaki. He remembered this. This was the day of the… It was the day.

He turned around anyway and came face-to-face with himself, looking distinctly annoyed and staring down the Japanese swordsman as if Tatsumaki couldn’t cut him in half in a blink.

Except Tatsumaki would never and the young man simply bowed instead.

Blaize wanted to scream.

He did. It did no good. He tried reaching for himself, to perhaps shake sense into him or just stop him from giving the order.

It didn’t work.

Darkness rose up around him like water and Blaize instinctively held his breath, but aside from a harsh cold, the darkness didn’t come remotely close to hurting him. It just surrounded him until he thought he would freeze solid and then it deposited him back into warmth and light and noise.

Blaize found himself standing next to a crouched Tatsumaki, soot streaked across one side of his face and blood on the other. His dark eyes were narrowed at something behind Blaize and he turned around on instinct, swearing softly as he took in the sight of the burning building and the scorched bodies in front of it.

“Is this what happened, Tatsu? What weren’t you willing to tell us?” Like before, Blaize’s voice had no apparent effect and he groaned.

Tatsumaki stiffened then, but he still didn’t look at Blaize. His attention was drawn to his left, to the investigator crouched there, soot smearing brown hair and Blaize still didn’t remember their name.

“We have to go in there.”

Tatsumaki looked from them to the building and then back, frowning, “It is going to collapse.”

His accent was thicker here, the ‘l’s not pronounced quite as fluidly and it was something Blaize never noticed and probably never would have if not for this.

“But we have to make sure the summoning is stopped!”

Tatsumaki gave the flames another look and Blaize could read everything in just his face alone, “The building will collapse.”

“We have to be sure,” and then the investigator was off and Tatsumaki was left looking surprised. He grabbed for his phone, dialing it as he stood to jog after the investigator.

Blaize heard his own voice on the other end of the line, just like he knew it would be, “What?”

“The building is on fire-”

“So? Finish the job and then come back.”

“Atherton-” Tatsumaki’s accent on his name had bothered him at one point and Blaize didn’t know when Tatsumaki had made a clear effort to ‘fix’ that. He shouldn’t have had to. Blaize swallowed against the spike of regret.

“Just finish the job.”

Tatsumaki hesitated and the phone clicked, line disconnected. Blaize had thought he had better things to do at the time. He hadn’t thought to listen, and Tatsumaki…

He hadn’t known what happened then, but he supposed he was about to find out, pulled behind the swordsman by something he couldn’t see or touch. It felt almost like rope around his waist.

Tatsumaki set his phone down on the sidewalk across from the building, “You will survive here, and hopefully bring others.”

Blaize looked around, but it seemed like Tatsumaki was talking to the little device he left on the sidewalk. He even patted it once before he turned and darted into the burning building, following the investigator that had long since vanished from sight.

Blaize followed, throat tightening in an instinctive reaction to the fire, though it produced no heat.

Not to him, at least. Tatsumaki, on the other hand, flinched away from the flames and after a brief hesitation, tossed his katana back onto the sidewalk where Blaize knew they’d find it later, miraculously untouched by the rubble. The blue lacquered sheath wouldn’t even bear scratches, though the same could not be said for its owner.

"Tatsu, I was wrong. Please just get out of the building.” 

As before, the young man showed no sign of hearing him, calling out between coughs for the investigator. He stopped after a couple of calls and listened intently- and Blaize did the same. Above the crackling and hissing of the flames came an answering call that devolved into a scream.

Tatsumaki hit the stairs running.

Blaize jerked in surprise and followed him up- though it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter, not with the sudden constriction around his waist. He was surprised to find himself keeping up. He’d forgotten in the intervening year just how _fast_ Tatsumaki had been. The reminder made his heart ache.

The floor creaking dangerously beneath them made his heart _stop._ Tatsumaki ignored the warning, leaping over a sudden hole in the floor with a move that looked far too practiced and far too complicated to replicate. Blaize, at least, could never get to that level of athleticism.

He was pretty sure he didn’t even want to try.

“Tatsu, please, _please_ listen to me. Let’s leave. Turn around. This doesn’t do anything! They still die, and you-”

Tatsumaki showed no sign of hearing him and deftly dodged around a gout of flame that looked suspiciously humanoid in shape. It seemed like the swordsman recognized his as well because as soon as he was past the creature, his pace picked up. There was nothing in here to use as a weapon- everything was actively burning or too hot to touch and Blaize wanted nothing more than to go back to being ignorant.

He couldn’t feel the heat from these flames, but Tatsumaki’s fair skin was getting darker and the welts that appeared on his arms hadn’t been there before. He was slowly burning alive in here, searching for the other investigator to do as Blaize told him.

Blaize didn’t deserve that dedication.

He wasn’t sure that anyone did.

He swallowed a soft curse as Tatsumaki climbed higher into the building and stumbled over the first charred body. The swordsman also uttered something that sounded like a swear, albeit on that Blaize didn’t recognize, and knelt down to see if there were any identifying marks on the blackened skin or clothes.

He moved on when he couldn’t find any but Blaize lingered, looking at the distorted features, searching for even the slightest glint of a badge that would mean that this was the investigator.

No such luck. What he saw instead was the eyelids peeling back to reveal empty sockets, eyes destroyed by the flames- which should be impossible, the building couldn’t be that hot, Tatsumaki was still running through it- and the fragile skin tearing as the person _moved._

Blaize shouted a warning before he could stop himself, but Tatsumaki was already gone and the invisible rope at his waist demanded that Blaize follow _now._ He gave one last look to the shambling, charred corpse- it had to be a corpse, no one could, no one _should_ be moving around like that- and let the rope guide him as he sprinted away.

He caught up to Tatsumaki on the top floor as the swordsman stumbled to a stop, caught off-guard by the gruesome sight within.

Blaize was beginning to see why Tatsumaki had refused to tell them _anything._

The investigator was dead, half of their face just _gone,_ and their left arm blackened up to the elbow and twisted completely around.

The right arm was being chewed on by something that Blaize really thought shouldn’t be able to move even with magic- something scorched nearly to the bone but still moving like the tendons and ligaments that enabled movement were still attached and functioning.

Tatsumaki flinched back as the chewing stopped and the thing twisted around to look up at him, what little skin remained on its cheek sloughing off. They remained perfectly still in a stalemate until the skin hit the floor and then the thing lunged over the investigator’s body, an unholy screech coming from lungs burned beyond recognition.

When Blaize got back to his own time, the real world, he knew he’d be having nightmares from this. Gods above knew that Tatsumaki already was, and with good reason.

And, fuck. He’d been mocking them just yesterday, claiming a mental superiority because a fire shouldn’t have been that scary, not when Tatsumaki barely had any burns.

Which…actually didn’t make sense. Blaize frowned as he watched Tatsumaki dodge the creature- the swordsman had some minor burns but nothing compared to the thing chasing after him, nothing even compared to the investigator, who’s skin was slowly charring as they lay.

Then Tatsumaki’s dark eyes flashed white and the flames licking the corner of the room _vanished,_ taking with them the smoke that had been steadily gathering, smoke that Blaize hadn’t really noticed until it was gone.

“Tatsu, what the fuck?!”

Predictably, he didn’t answer, still darting away from the corpse. It had slowed when the flames vanished but didn’t cease, driven by something relentless that Blaize couldn’t sense.

He rather thought that Tatsumaki could, though, given the way he seemed to be searching the room as he played keep-away with a monster. It persisted like that for a few moments, until Tatsumaki dove for a particularly blackened patch of ground pulled a pocketknife from somewhere and slammed it blade-deep into the floor.

Immediately, the room crackled with energy, loud and bright and violent, and Tatsumaki stumbled back as the floor heaved. Behind him, the creature made one final lunge and then crumbled into dust, as did the blackened parts of the investigator.

Tatsumaki looked at the glowing circle expanding from the knife and then at the doorway on the opposite of it.

Blaize didn’t need knowledge of the future to know that Tatsumaki wasn’t going to make it.

He tried anyway.

Blaize watched the ground crumble away in slow motion, watched Tatsumaki lose his footing and fall, watched the remnants of the floor follow him, pocketknife suspended in a free fall. The blade caught the light in a way that might’ve been pretty in any other situation and Blaize stared at it so he wouldn’t have to look at Tatsumaki’s expression.

The collapse of the building itself became a distraction when the knife was obscured by debris and he watched in horrified fascination as the walls screamed and cracked and tumbled down. None of it touched him as he and Tatsumaki plummeted.

The fall took forever, and the landing was…

It was _quiet._ Blaize couldn’t hear the rumbling of the collapse anymore, he couldn’t hear anything.

“Tatsu? Tatsu, please give me a sign that you aren’t dead.”

The ruined room they were in remained stubbornly silent.

Blaize gave himself one more minute to listen for the slightest hint of the swordsman and when nothing came, he started picking his way across the rubble, careful not to touch anything that he didn’t have to- and being unsurprised when his presence did _nothing_ to disrupt the scene.

He could still feel the invisible rope around his waist, but it had gone limp and gave him nothing but a vague direction.

It was enough, and Blaize regretted his search as soon as he found Tatsumaki.

The swordsman was unconscious, blood trickling from his forehead and painting too-pale face in a garish red. His left arm was obviously dislocated, pulled into an unnatural angle and covered in scratches.

All of Tatsumaki was covered in scratches, actually. Scratches and dust, blood and soot.

And Blaize couldn’t see any sign of the most damning part of all of this. No one would, not for many hours, not until a weary surgeon came out and asked for his next of kin and told them all that Tatsumaki had two crushed vertebrae and would never walk again. The investigators at the scene could only speculate that he’d hit something going down.

Blaize was inclined to agree with them now, except that Tatsumaki hadn’t hit anything on the way down. He’d just hit the ground, landed on top of uneven and jagged rubble and that had been _it._

He wouldn’t have even been inside if not for Blaize.

Blaize swallowed this thought and settled down beside Tatsumaki, prepared to wait with him until the paramedics arrived. It wasn’t like there was anything else to to-

-except darkness washed over him, as bitterly cold as before and deposited him outside a burning building, next to a Japanese swordsman and a young investigator.

This time, he was close enough to read the name printed on the investigator’s little name badge.

Jordan Parker.

That was their name.

Blaize committed it to memory as he reached out, “Guys, don’t go in there, there’s-”

“We have to go in there.”

Tatsumaki looked from them to the building and then back, frowning, “It is going to collapse.”

Blaize swallowed down sudden nausea at the repeated lines, voices and tone identical to what felt like only an hour before.

“But we have to make sure the summoning is stopped!”

Blaize didn’t need to look at Tatsumaki’s face this time, “The building will collapse.”

“We have to be sure,” and the investigator- _Jordan_ \- was gone, sprinting towards the building.

Blaize swallowed again, throat tight, and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to watch this again.

The rope around his waist tightened and he didn’t move until it tightened to the point of pain, until it gave him no choice but to follow.

So he followed, but he kept his eyes shut.

It didn’t stop him from hearing Tatsumaki call him, from hearing him set his phone down and toss his katana away from the fire, from hearing Tatsumaki’s footsteps just beneath the roar of the flames.

Somehow, the noise was worse without his sight.

He heard Tatsumaki yell for the investigator, he heard the scream, the sizzle of the fire _thing_ that lurked on the ground floor, the groaning of the building itself.

He couldn’t watch this again.

Something cold and almost sharp forced his eyelids open in time to watch Tatsumaki kneel down next to the first blackened body.

Blaize prayed for Tatsumaki to turn back, to see the thing move, to get out of there.

He watched instead as Tatsumaki headed for the stairs again.

He saw the investigator’s body again, only this time, he had a name for them. He saw _Jordan Parker’s_ body again.

And the thing munching on Jordan’s leg.

He watched it lunge at Tatsumaki, watched the swordsman lead it around in his final dance, watched Tatsumaki pull out the knife from absolutely _nowhere,_ watched him destroy the magic Blaize still couldn’t feel.

Watched him tumble with the floor.

The pressure on his eyes made sure he watched Tatsumaki hit the ground, four stories below.

It released him to the unnerving quiet and Blaize wished that he could hear anything- or that someone could hear him, but the building, what little remained of it, was empty of the living save for Tatsumaki and himself.

And even then, who knew if he was even alive? He was beginning to wonder.

The darkness arose again and this time, it wasn’t a surprise.

It deposited him back beside Tatsumaki, just in time to hear himself order the swordsman to finish the job.

If nothing else, he wished that he could smack himself for that, for starting the avalanche that would thoroughly ruin Tatsumaki’s life.

But nothing changed. The rope around his waist dragged him behind Tatsumaki once more, pulling him through intangible flames and past things that shouldn’t exist or should be dead, heaving him up the stairs only to drop him again as Tatsumaki fell and fell and fell and fell.

He could trace the blood on Tatsumaki’s face from memory now. He’d figured out where the knife came from- up Tatsumaki’s sleeve, hidden in a tiny sheathe attached to his wrist.

He saw the flash in Tatsumaki’s eyes, the strange banishment of the fire, the brief confusion that followed before Tatsumaki pushed it away to keep himself alive.

Blaize half-wondered if it was worth it. Maybe the swordsman would’ve been better off if he hadn’t survived this.

The darkness swallowed him again.


End file.
